View full sizeLynn Ischay, The Plain DealerIndians President Mark Shapiro sees reason to be excited over the remainder of the team's 2012 season: "We've got an exciting group of emerging young players along with some players in their prime [who] are star-type players."

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- As the Indians took two of three in Detroit to keep pace with Chicago for first place before heading to St. Louis for the start of 15 inter-league games, team President Mark Shapiro sat down in the team's model suite at Progressive Field for an interview in which he assessed the club, fan support and the business of baseball.

As the grounds crew watered the field below, Shapiro, in a light blue golf shirt with the team's familiar red block "C" logo, was frank and upbeat. It didn't hurt that inconsistent Tribe pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez had just beaten the Tigers the night before, looking like the ace the club thought it had acquired in a risky stretch-run trade last season.

On the team...

Plain Dealer:What's your assessment of the team at this point in the season?

Mark Shapiro: I think the team has been one that demonstrates the values that we look for in Cleveland Indians players. They are tough. They've shown a resilience and a resolve -- we've had a lot of injuries in a short period of time. We've got an exciting group of emerging young players along with some players in their prime that are star-type players, like (shortstop) Asdrubal [Cabrera] and [right fielder] Shin-Soo Choo, some veterans who have made some unique contributions -- Derek Lowe and Travis Hafner, when he was healthy. And yet I think what is most encouraging about the team is that we haven't played our best baseball yet.

PD:What do you consider the core?

MS: Well, obviously, we've got emerging middle-of-the-diamond stars in [catcher] Carlos Santana and [second baseman] Jason Kipnis. We've got a guy, [center fielder] Michael Brantley, who's also establishing himself as a major-league player and a good major-league players. His upside's unknown because he's the youngest of the three ... [and] with Asdrubal signing an extension. You can define core in different ways, but Shin-Soo Choo has been a core player for us and will continue to be for the next couple of seasons, so you take Cabrera and Choo and mix them in, and obviously you've got guys like [Justin] Masterson and [Josh] Tomlin and [Vinnie] Pestano and Chris Perez on the pitching side.

PD:Can you grade the Ubaldo [Jimenez] trade, and what's been the problem?

MS: I don't believe you can grade trades along the way. You grade them at any juncture in time, you are going to make a mistake. What you have is snapshots in time in which you form opinions, and then you wait and evaluate once it's clear. You've got to evaluate on both sides -- what did you get, what did you give up. What I'm clear on is that the intent of the Ubaldo trade was our effort to seize an opportunity, our effort to demonstrate a sense of urgency to our fans that we want to win, we want to win now ... I think it's still premature to evaluate the trade.

PD:Why did you decide to pay [injured center fielder Grady] Sizemore so much? Couldn't you have gotten him for less?

MS: That's not a lot. If you look at the value of a major-league free agent, one win in major-league free agency is somewhere between seven and eight million dollars. When you look at what $5 million can get you on the major league free-agent market, before you say, "Why did you pay him so much?", go look at who's being paid $5 million. ... We got the right deal at that time and I still feel like there was no player available with his level of upside on the market at those dollars, without a doubt.

PD:Can you give us an update on Roberto Hernandez and whether he'll be in an Indians uniform this season?

MS: Unfortunately, it's a little bit frustrating when you're operating in a situation where you have zero control. It's in the hands of the State Department. We've been advocates for Roberto along the way. We certainly want him here, don't be mistaken about that. We feel that, with starting pitching, we'd love to add him to our rotation, so we're doing everything we can, but what we can do is limited. ... [Manager] Manny [Acta] has talked to him consistently.

MS: Our goal is to continue to provide him opportunities to grow and to learn and to continue to enhance his impact on our team and our organization. It's been extremely gratifying to see him make such an impact on the community here and on the field here come and transition into a staff role and to watch him grow over a period of time into a guy that's legitimately a major-league managerial prospect. In short, our desire is to continue to help Sandy achieve his goals and, unfortunately, it will probably be elsewhere because we love Manny and the job he's doing and the impact he's made here.

PD:Is there any chance of getting the All-Star Game back here?

MS: It's something we've talked about. It's not something that's rolled around all 30 teams since it's been here, but those are conversations that we've had -- not in any formal effort that we've requested or lobbied for. It's certainly something probably in the mid-term to long-term that we'd like to have happen again.

MS: I think any fan criticism is fair. I think fans have a right to criticize. That's part of being a fan, is being passionate. Part of being a fan is not only celebrating, but also expressing disappointment. And I don't begrudge any fan to have the right to express himself or herself in any way as long as it's respectful and doesn't kind of violate a line of appropriate behavior.

PD:What about the anti-Dolan criticism?

MS: That's sort of two separate issues -- just the fan comments and fan criticism and then there's the ownership issue. When it comes to ownership, I guess what I feel is a sense of disappointment, but I do feel the criticism of ownership is unfair. I feel that our ownership is also penalized for the timing of when they bought the team, not for how they've run the team. I wish the fans could know the Dolans like I know the Dolans. I wish they could know how much they care about the city, how much they care about the Indians and how badly they want to win. They've operated extremely responsibly, they're respected in Major League Baseball, they're excellent owners and operators and, most importantly, why people like me have chosen to work here and stay here is because they're good people, they have impeccable character and integrity and they want the same things that every fan wants and that we all want.

PD:Why do you think the fans haven't responded to this team like some might expect?

Pre-baseball: Worked in real estate development in Southern California before joining Tribe in 1992 as an assistant in baseball operations.

Personal: Married to artist Lissa Bockrath; they have two children. Brother-in-law of former Browns head coach Eric Mangini.

— Bill Lubinger

MS: I guess I feel like the fans have. I think you're overlooking that our attendance is very similar to last year. It's marginally off, small percentage points off from last year. We've had a challenge weather-wise. I think our best days are ahead of us. I just continue to believe as these guys play the type of baseball they're capable of playing, as the weather gets better, as schools get out that we're going to look back at the end of the year and this momentary disappointment in attendance is going to be just that -- it's going to be momentary.

PD:Doesn't winning cure most of it?

MS: Winning can either mask your ills but it can certainly provide a boost, and when you look at the levers that provide a boost, there is no lever bigger than winning and there's nothing more important to this franchise, this organization, than winning.

PD:How do you define a "baseball town?"

MS: A baseball town to me has multi-generational fans [who] are passionate about the game, that care about the team, they care about winning, that have that generational connection and storytelling. So it's that father sitting down with his son. It's that grandmother sitting down with her granddaughter or grandson. It's that uncle sitting down with his nephew who can talk about a shortstop from three generations ago or the shortstop this year and how much they remind him of each other. ... That's the great thing about baseball, you can watch baseball footage from 100 years ago and, other than the fabric in the uniforms, it's the same game being played by similar types of players.

PD:Some people say Cleveland is not a baseball town.

MS: I disagree with that. ... I think to strictly judge a baseball town only by attendance at one juncture in time is a mistake. Cleveland is a baseball town. The demographics may not allow us to have as many people in the stands. The regional attraction may not allow us to equal what St. Louis is doing, but that doesn't limit the fact that this is a baseball town. It's a town that cares deeply about the Indians, it's a town that is passionate about the team, it's a town that has a historic understanding of a charter franchise in the American League and a generational appeal.

PD:What are fans supposed to think when they see free agents leaving and the team trading two Cy Young Award winners and not getting what they would expect in return?

MS: I guess I'd say to them -- and the same thing I said at the time I made those trades -- they're not trades that we want to make. ... No one said to me, 'Do you want to trade CC Sabathia?' No one said to me, 'Do you want to trade Cliff Lee?' That was never the choice. It was, here's the circumstances, find a way to win. And those are tough decisions at any one moment in time. [They] may feel extremely painful; they do to us when we make them, but they're all done out of a relentless commitment to try to find a way to put a world championship team on the field. ... None of those decisions has ever been made because of finances. They were made because of a driving desire to get us a win.

PD:What is the club doing about the league's competitive balance problem? There are more small- and mid-market clubs than big-market teams, so why not band together for change? How far do you push to level the field?

MS: I think the system works well for most teams. Part of what's enabled baseball to thrive overall as a game has been the commissioner's ability to keep all 30 teams together despite things being better to some than others. Certainly, from our standpoint, we get frustrated with what we feel are clear objective reasons that competitive balance doesn't work as well for us. And, believe me, we don't just silently accept that. We spend energy, time and lobbying and explaining our situation and we engage with the commissioner's office and with other teams in an attempt to improve those conditions. ... There are things that we clearly and very specifically believe that will help, but we think it's more effective to keep those between us and (the league office in) New York.

On the business...

PD:What is suite occupancy?

MS: We've got just over 48 suites leased (of 110), which I think is a remarkable number. It's among the highest in baseball. Remember, the Yankees have a total of 65 suites, period, and that's New York. (Progressive Field was built with 130 suites).

PD:We've talked before about planned changes to the ballpark. Can you give me any specifics?

MS: When I think of the ballpark, I think of it in terms of short-, mid- and long-term. Short-term, it's maintaining. This ballpark is close to 20 years old, and that's remarkable because when you talk to people in the community, they still feel like it's a new ballpark. It still feels new. So short-term, it's maintaining. We spend millions of dollars a year -- over the last two years, over $5 million each year -- just in short-term maintenance and preservation of what makes this ballpark so special. Mid-term, where are the right scale of opportunities to enhance the experience here? So it's saying, we've got some inventory of space, what can we do that's reasonable. (For example, the Indians combined six suites into a kid's clubhouse, updated the Club Lounge and look for ways to create events in and around the ballpark) ... And then the long-term, it's how do we ensure that this remains a state-of-the-art facility for the next generation of Indians fans.

PD:Is it true that the Indians are among the top teams in spending on player development?

MS: Our model for achieving championship success ... is going to be the same model that we talked about for 20 years here. It's going to be relentless talent acquisition at every level, but most important, at the amateur level, through the draft, through Latin America, but also through aggressively making trades. Our player development system has got to be the best player development system out there. ... We rank in the upper quartile of Major League Baseball (in spending on scouting and player development) in any given year.

PD:How does STO help improve the team beyond marketing and exposure?

MS: They're a good partner for us. They're run totally separately from us. ... The fact that we have common ownership doesn't end up day-to-day manifesting itself. ...

PD:So it's not one of those situations where it generates more money to spend on players or development or whatever, like I've seen around the league?

MS: No, the only amount we get from SportsTime Ohio is our rights fee, which is in line with our market, which is a deal that was done a few years ago and is no disproportionate amount of revenue generated.

PD:That could change based on what the owner wants to do, right? If ownership wanted to throw more of the profits from STO toward the team, it could do that, right?

MS: I'm not privy to what those profits are, and my sense is there's not the profits in the magnitude that you're talking about, but that would be a question for ownership.

MS: The Indians are, from year to year, marginally profitable. So this year we will clearly not be profitable. This year, unless there's some huge surge in attendance, we will clearly lose a lot of money and we're budgeted to lose money. We're budgeted to say we're at a point in the wind curve where our owner was accepting outspending revenues in order to best ensure the chance to win. There have been other times in the front office where we haven't recommended that. We wanted to save those arrows in our quiver for the right time. But even when we have been profitable, it has not been on any Yu Darvish scale, and the entire time that I've been here with the Dolans, every single profit that we have taken have been put right back into the team the following year.

PD:But fans see stories like those about the Pittsburgh Pirates losing year after year while making a decent profit. How realistic is that?

MS: The articles that try to guess take a limited amount of information and guess a team's financials, those articles are dangerous because those articles do not provide the full picture. They do not look at every operating circumstance that goes into running the business, and I'm not going to get into specifics and refute it line by line, but I can tell you those articles take part of the information.

PD:But we read in sources like Forbes about $30 million in operating income last year.

MS: I don't make unequivocal comments very often. I tend to be very careful and guarded before I say anything, but I can unequivocally tell you that's not the profit that we made, and I'm sitting here every day responsible for running a major-league franchise that's not existing in those parameters.

On the Indians chances...

PD:Besides staying healthy, what has to happen with this team to be playing in October?

MS: Starting pitching. Justin Masterson has to move closer to the guy he was last year -- not the guy -- but move closer, Ubaldo has got to continue to move closer to the guy that pitched [June 5 in Detroit] ... Zach McAllister comes up and becomes a contributing pitcher for us and maybe that's it, I don't know. But I'm a big believer that starting pitching puts you in a position to win games every night, and I'm a huge believer that if our starting pitching gives us a chance, our lineup is more than good enough, our manager gets the most our of our lineup, creates an environment where our players play hard, and our manager puts them in a position to be successful. ... If that happens, I think we're going to be playing meaningful games here in September.

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